Mission: The Cicada Institute is an educational organization whose mission is to provide comprehensive holistic learning based on the principles of empowerment, environmental activism, multi-generational wisdom, community service and psychological self-regulation. By working with, listening to, and supporting at-risk youth, Cicada offers students authentic agency to lead their own recovery, build long-term, sustainable and resilient communities and combat the effects of climate change through critical thinking and practical problem-solving.

Vision: The Cicada Institute envisions vibrant, resilient, connected, and empowered students that will shift the paradigm of educational capitalism, social injustice and climate change towards a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

Core Values

Diversity Empowerment: Every student will strengthen their authentic agency by increasing self-awareness, self-esteem, self-control and self-care.

Environmental Activism: Utilizing permaculture skills, eco-building knowledge, environmental stewardship, and community service experience — students will problem-solve solutions for a more sustainable society and influence others to do the same.

Multi-Generational Wisdom: The way forward comes from understanding the past. Students will learn from and serve elders in the community and catalogue their wisdom for the prosperity of  future generations. Youth will teach and care for younger populations in an effort to learn responsibility, compassion, and patience. 

Community Service:  Decentralization and sharing of power within groups and communities reduces hierarchies and power imbalances within and between groups of people, enabling disenfranchised peoples to participate fully in rebuilding a better world together. Our students  offer their service to such communities as a regular part of their learning. 

Psychological Self-Regulation: Students will be able to recognize and redirect fight-flight-freeze triggers in the nervous system by implementing self-soothing techniques such as mindfulness, nutrition, movement, stress-reduction, healthy boundaries, wilderness therapy, journaling, and the communication of needs. 

Sustainability:  Students will encompass a respect for the intersectionality of all living systems, community norms and practices, as well as the distribution of knowledge about ecologically-sound and economically viable systems designs, which provide for their own needs and do not exploit or pollute. Skills training and upskilling are shared within the community and people are empowered to create or regenerate diverse, resilient communities that meet immediate ecological, economic, and social needs while increasing the health of human bodies, relationships, and the ecosystems in which they are embedded.

Collective Liberation:  In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”. All struggles are intimately connected and movements must work together and share knowledge, power, and resources in order to bring about a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world free of any kind of unjust oppression of others or the earth.